{"id":1083,"date":"2010-03-15T09:31:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T16:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2025-11-04T11:14:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T18:14:44","slug":"child-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1083","title":{"rendered":"Child Labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday was a lovely morning of watching my kids (12, 10 & 8 – all boys) clean my house.\u00a0 How did I get them to do THAT you may ask.. well, if you’ve read the blog from the beginning you’ve tracked my philosophy.\u00a0 Or you can click here to catch up.
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Kids and Money – The How<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When the first kid asked if they could play the GameCube I told him yes, AFTER all the chores were done.\u00a0 I then made a list of the chores to be done before any of them could play electronics.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is the list:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Put away the washed apples, Load the Dishwasher, Hand wash all cookie sheets & wood blocks (we’d had pizza so there were 3 of them), Pick up all the toys off the bedroom floor prior to vacuuming, Vacuum Upstairs & Downstairs (hardwood floors so not TOO hard), Sweep the Steps, Mop upstairs & Downstairs (Wet Swiffer – again not too hard), Mop the Steps, Clean both toilets, Wash both bathroom sinks, Refill the Liquid Hand Soap Containers, and – here was the kicker – Scrub the Inside of the Microwave. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Working together they could have gotten this all done in 30 minutes.\u00a0 But it did turn into a bit of play and distraction and yelling to get themselves back on track so in all it took them 2 hours.\u00a0 But they did it and did it without whining or complaining. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Because I’ve done this before.. withheld their currency, i.e. electronics, until the chores are done.\u00a0 So not only do they know I’m serious, they know when they work together and Just Do It (go Nike!) its done and they have the rest of the day to play. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And when they finished I looked over what they did and spot cleaned where the job was pretty bad.\u00a0 Evan did a surprisingly good job on the microwave considering he’d never cleaned it before and it was a good 4 months filthy.\u00a0 He completely didn’t see the top of the inside and ignored the outside, but I only had to do what he missed because he did such a good job. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So I got to spend my morning watching t.v., working online and on a heating pad for my back while my kids cleaned my house.\u00a0 Its not as good as a paid maid might do (or myself for that matter) but its good enough for this week.\u00a0\u00a0 So, Victory! My plan is working!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

(Oh and the oldest decided to cook pancakes for breakfast, which I accidentally added my Vanilla Carmel CoffeeMate Creamer to because the bowl was next to my coffee cup and I hadn’t had any coffee [OBVIOUSLY!!] and didn’t know what I was doing so the\u00a0 pancakes tasted extra delicious, and he did it without any help from me [well except for the whole creamer interference] and it was great NOT having to cook!)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So the oldest are getting the chores down really nicely.\u00a0\u00a0 Nice enough that I can now start making them do not only MORE chores, but start making them do the chores to a better standard of clean. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

They call me “evil mom” and I smile and think “What can I get them to do now?”\u00a0\u00a0 Hmmmm…\u00a0 Filing!!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n


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Saturday was a lovely morning of watching my kids (12, 10 & 8 – all boys) clean my house.\u00a0 How did I get them to do THAT you may ask.. well, if you’ve read the blog from the beginning you’ve … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narcissist-secrets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3329,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}